“The Bear”'s Matty Matheson Marks 11 Years of Sobriety After He Says Addiction Led to Heart Attack at 29
The restaurateur detailed his previous life of "lots of drinking and doing drugs" in a recent 'Guardian' article ahead of his sober milestone
FX; Matty Matheson/Instagram
Matty MathesonMatty Matheson is celebrating a major milestone.
The Bear star and YouTube sensation, 42, marked more than a decade of sobriety in an Instagram post shared on Nov. 12.
“11 YEARS SINCE I FOUND A NEW WAY TO LIVE,” the cookbook author, whose latest book Soups, Salads, Sandwiches was published on Oct. 22, wrote in the caption. “I LOVE MY LIFE I LOVE MY FAMILY I LOVE MY FRIENDS! THERES A WORLD WHERE YOU DONT NEED DRUGS OR ALCOHOL! THERES ROOMS WHERE PEOPLE WILL LOVE YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE YOURSELF AGAIN! I LOVE YOU!”
The enthusiastic caption was paired with a raw photo of himself hospitalized at age 29 for a heart attack he says was caused by his substance abuse.
“All the industry clichés are real. Lots of drinking and doing drugs,” Matheson told The Guardian in a Nov. 3 article of his alcohol and cocaine abuse. “Live like that for 10 years? You get kinda burnt.”
“Even at my craziest moments of drinking and drugs, I always showed up for work. I could go hard until six, eight in the morning. As long as I got two or three hours sleep, I was good,” Matheson said. He continued, explaining that a few years after opening his first beloved restaurant, Parts and Labour in Toronto, he felt the effects of his addiction. “It was after long years of going at it. I went to bed Saturday night, and woke up Sunday thinking I was having one. I went to the hospital: I’d had a heart attack in my sleep,” he said.
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Jeremy Allen White and Matty Matheson in 'The Bear'Matheson recalled partying less for just a few months before “[turning] it back up.” He said friends banned him from their bars and his drug dealers cut him off until his loved ones held an intervention in November 2013 — two years after his heart attack.
Making videos for Vice’s food-focused YouTube page Munchies helped him to pay back his friends and drug dealers, Matheson explained. So he pivoted from his restaurants and into the online food world instead.
Ten years of marriage, three children, three cookbooks, 1.5 million followers on his YouTube channel and many more accomplishments later, Matheson’s skills have been taken to the small screen for three seasons of The Bear. He was initially called upon to consult for the Emmy-winning series but was offered the role of Neil Fak, one of the few non-chef characters in the series.
“I definitely didn’t want to act a chef, I knew that. Maybe this funny, sweet handyman,” Matheson explained. The restaurateur wears his own clothes on the show for even more of a personal touch. As a consultant, he guided the show’s creator Christopher Storer on “the realities of how people move, how people talk, how people think about food in restaurants. The high intensity moments. Uncompromising lifestyle.”
